We won't see major transition, until there is that killer app that is only accessible via IPv6. Ultimately, though, I don't think it will be a killer app. I think it is going to be a killer use case like sensors and automation everywhere that forces the larger businesses to transition because of their own internal address depletion issues. Once the 800lb gorillas start the transition and >50% of content and apps transition it will be all downhill from there. The question is how long it takes for the snowflakes to collect into large enough snowballs to start gathering momentum to go downhill. I think it is still another 3 to 5 years off before the economics of the problem really drives the wholesale mass market adoption.--Scott, CCIE #14618 Routing & Switching»rolande.wordpress.com/

We won't see major transition, until there is that killer app that is only accessible via IPv6. Ultimately, though, I don't think it will be a killer app. I think it is going to be a killer use case like sensors and automation everywhere that forces the larger businesses to transition because of their own internal address depletion issues. Once the 800lb gorillas start the transition and >50% of content and apps transition it will be all downhill from there. The question is how long it takes for the snowflakes to collect into large enough snowballs to start gathering momentum to go downhill. I think it is still another 3 to 5 years off before the economics of the problem really drives the wholesale mass market adoption.

Thank god that is not true. Such a "killer app" will not be necessary. The transition will happen anyway just by the ISPs actually getting off their butts and enabling support out of the box by default. Most of the major brand names sell routers with v6 out of the box now. The ISPs will roll out firmware upgrades to their own provided CPE and some are already doing that now such as Verizon, Comcast and some of the other MSOs. It'll be a lot sooner than 3 to 5 years with ARIN about to run out of address space by next year.

IPv6 is not taking forever because of the lack of a killer app, it's because the IPSs are dragging their asses to support it. Virtually every computer and smartphone on the market supports IPv6, but until the IPSs give out addresses, we will remain stuck on IPv4. I got around this using a tunnel.

It is still a chicken and the egg problem. Even if all the ISPs enable native IPv6 support on their CPE, it won't mean a darn thing until most of the major content providers are offering their content natively via IPv6 and the default DNS response is a AAAA record. There is no real carrot yet for the content providers to spend resources on building all of the native IPv6 support.

Until you start seeing large populations of users who can only get IPv6 connectivity, the majority of the content providers will not put a high priority on offering services via IPv6. I still say 3 to 5 years before you start seeing any real significant adoption numbers that actually mean anything. Regardless of how fast the Internet moves, the services made available are still governed by the laws of economics.--Scott, CCIE #14618 Routing & Switching»rolande.wordpress.com/

With IPv4 pools depleted, it is only a matter of time before ISPs start having to CG-NAT their subscribers.

Everyone has been claiming the Internet sky is falling and that IPv6 transition must happen now, since 1995. While I don't disagree that the transition needs to happen, it still won't happen as fast as everyone thinks it will. Back in 1995 when the sky was first falling, NAT was introduced and classless routing, and suddenly the address scarcity problem with IPv4 was "resolved" or at least delayed considerably.

The next iteration of that kind of band-aid solution has been introduced by Cisco which is a stateless mapping of IPv6 to duplicate IPv4 addresses called MAP-T. So, there is an optional path available for those carriers stuck in the address starvation problem to continue supporting native IPv4 on their CPE, even after they have run out of unique IPs to hand out. Everyone knows that CG-NAT only scales so far before the hardware is crushed via memory starvation. If stateful translation were required, it would force native adoption much faster within the ISPs who were address starved. MAP-T gives them another out to ride out the transition period.

So, once again, the sky really is not falling. It will take time to truly reach critical mass where there is enough native IPv6 support, enough demand from IPv6 only clients, and content providers who see economic value in spending the money to fully transition their services. The adoption curve will look more like a hockey stick. It will be slow and steady adoption, until some point of critical mass occurs between native client population, native service provider support, and native content providers. At that point the adoption rate will skyrocket to nearly 100% in a fairly short amount of time relative to the previous rate over the past 10-15 years. I still think the knee of that curve is closer to 5 years out.--Scott, CCIE #14618 Routing & Switching»rolande.wordpress.com/

Any major content provider is already using IPv6. All major datacenters are running IPv6. Verizon and T-Mobile already use IPv6 on their LTE networks by default. T-Mobile offers it as an option for its HSPA network.

Along with wireline networks and thousands of datacenters, that's a lot of devices and servers already IPv6-ready. It really is mostly a matter of time at this point. Once LTE is ubiquitous and end-users have upgraded to IPv6-capable routers at home, the only hindrance would be ISP's.--"What makes us omniscient? Have we a record of omniscience? ...If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning."-United States Secretary of Defense (1961-1968) Robert S. McNamara

Actually, I think it will be the opposite, apps which are killed by having end users not have any globally routable IPv4 addresses due to carriers deploying LSN. When end users can no longer port forward on their routers to get at at-home services, they'll be nudged toward the restoration of end-to-end addressabiltity which IPv6 offers. So...no Remote Desktop, no P2P anything such as XBox, etc. Unfortunately, SIP/SDP/RTP for VOIP will continue to languish due to their being no widespread availability of IPv6 aware telephone adapters (ATAs).--English is a difficult enough language to interpret correctly when its rules are followed, let alone when a writer chooses not to follow those rules.